MasterChef: 'You are never, ever cooking for me again...'

TV's MasterChef can make fools out of even the finest cooks

Victoria Lambert faces the MasterChef judges

By Victoria Lambert

5:21PM GMT 07 Jan 2009

"Have you tasted this?" asked MasterChef judge Gregg Wallace, with a smile that never quite reached his eyes. He'd just tried my Mediterranean Summer Soup. I nodded nervously. "Taste it again. Now," he ordered. I did as I was told. "Do you like that?" he asked, his tone verging on the incredulous. I had to admit I did. I thought it was lovely, and bravely said so.

"In that case, you are never, ever cooking for me again." He looked at me with that half smile – the one that makes him look like a Cheshire Cat who has supped a bowl of curdled cream.

His equally stern-faced colleague, chef John Torode, tasted it slowly and – was that with a touch of reluctance? "Ah, olives. You put black olives in it. That accounts for the nasty, greasy aftertaste." Oh dear.

Somehow this culinary dressing down wasn't quite what I'd expected when I enthusiastically agreed to take part in a special, one-off MasterChef for journalists. The new series of what is probably the country's leading cookery competition began this week, giving another 130 hopeful chefs and amateur cooks the chance to showcase their talents, perhaps even leading to a change of career. We were being given the opportunity to try the same test under studio conditions: the same time frame (40 minutes to produce one course), the same surprise ingredients (a mixture of sweet and savoury foods, plus a small selection of basics) – and the same grilling from the famous hosts.

As a fairly enthusiastic home cook, I had thought it would be, at worst, a bit of fun. After all, my family and friends seem to enjoy what I produce. Dinner-party guests have been known to scrape the casserole dish after second helpings. I make bread, cakes, flapjacks and, despite being a non-meat eater, roasts, hotpots and can even run to Beef Wellington. But what many who enter MasterChef probably do not consider, and I certainly did not, is what nerves will do to a pressured cook.

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Trooping into the studio with my fellow contestants and lining up in silence in front of the judges was enough to trigger quiet panic. At first there were a few giggles, but then we looked at our work stations and the ingredients we had to choose from, and hysteria began to set in. According to John Torode, contestants develop a form of snow-blindness when they see just what they have to cook with – due to the pressure of being on television – with the result that they don't recognise ordinary foods. They also, he believes, add the wrong ingredients out of a form of madness.

It was certainly true for me. I looked down. I saw a piece of chicken, an onion, a leek, a courgette, some cannellini beans and some herbs. The rest was a blur. Then the clock was ticking and we were off.

I decided to make soup from the vegetables, beans and herbs, and abandon the chicken. I didn't even register the presence of a potato, which might have been useful, for about 20 minutes.

Luckily there was a small bottle of wine, which I considered administering to the chef before chucking most of it in my soup instead. Wine, herbs, fresh vegetables – what could go wrong? I'd already spotted there was double cream for garnish, and popped some herbs and slices of fresh ginger in the oven to crisp up as a sort of crouton. Well, it was MasterChef and somehow the "less is more" adage didn't feel right.

I turned my attention to making cheese scones to go with the soup. There was flour, yes, but apparently no butter. The producer called out "20 minutes left", so I panicked and chucked some groundnut oil in and began rubbing it in to the flour. Then I picked up the cheddar for grating. The small, handwritten label read "butter". I had, clearly, gone blind.

Blurred, I went back to the soup, tasted it, thought it a little bland, and chucked in – what's this? Olives? They'll do. A packet of Feta cheese materialised in front of me. I grated it and pushed it into the scone mix with an extra helping of baking powder and a handful of rosemary sprigs, then I formed the dough into a square and cut it into four cubes, before chucking them in the oven.

Miraculously they browned, and, when it was time for plating up, one did look very smart sitting beside a bowl of the puréed soup garnished with cream and baked herbs. I knew I was ahead of my competitors; they all seemed to be cooking the chicken with potato and were clearly rushing around. I even felt, dare I say it, quite relaxed.

But the short walk to the judging podium put paid to that. "Ten out of 10 for presentation," said Wallace. "Ten out of 10 for consistency." And then he tasted it, and all hope of my becoming the next Nigella vanished. Both Wallace and Torode were much more complimentary about my scones (although they pointed out that I should have called them bread, as no one orders a scone with soup). Torode, who has a kindly twinkle in his eyes, told me he even thought I might have invented a new dish. I think he meant it in a good way.

Meanwhile, Wallace redeemed himself in my eyes by saying that even though he hated my soup, he would have still put me through to the next round, based on my potential and skills (but clearly not my tastebuds).

Meanwhile, my competitors were having a fairly hectic time of it. One was accused of serving up cinnamon chicken porridge; another of making an eggy-tasting béchamel sauce. A third announced she had made "braised lettuce", to looks of horror from the judges that could have come straight from a Bateman cartoon. But the winner was adjudged to be Andy from the Press Association who pulled together "beautifully cooked chicken, creamy leeks and demon mashed potato". He was told he was likely to wow in the next round thanks to his clever seasoning and attention to detail. (We all quickly demanded the recipe for his potato – apparently the key is to put it back on the hob and keep cooking it after mashing. Who knew?)

The judges admit they don't always agree. There is a fair amount of heated discussion while the contestants mill about nervously outside. Torode marks on technical ability, Wallace on what he calls "the here and now", the eatability. Over the past four years, they claim to have tried a staggering 4,860 dishes.

As the series has become as much a part of the television calendar as Strictly Come Dancing, the judges have noticed that the standard is constantly rising. "At first, we just wanted to see competent cooks," says Wallace, "but now everyone is competent."

Of course the failures linger long in the memory: the worst two offerings of all time were, apparently, a combination of Feta cheese, pastry, peach, chorizo and tomatoes, and a puréed risotto with raw fish.

Not that the obvious failures take defeat any less harshly. "The critique can be a shock," says Wallace. It certainly was for me. I spent the days after the competition torturing myself over my choice of dish. Why didn't I make bread-and-butter pudding instead? Worse still, what if I simply have no palate?

I tackled a medical friend, who reassured me slightly, pointing out that my apparent lack of tastebuds may not be entirely my fault; women who struggle with their hormones, I'm told, may also partly lose their sense of taste. Perhaps this explains the paucity of women chefs (not to mention my enthusiasm for black olive soup).

My husband was honest but kind. "I do like your cooking," he said, mindful of the need not to create more work for himself at home. "But your choice of ingredients can be quite eccentric." It was left to my daughter to save the day – "I love everything you make, Mummy," she said, throwing her arms around me, thus neatly avoiding having to finish her dinner.

MasterChef is on BBC 2, Monday-Wednesday at 8.30pm and Thursday at 8pm for the next eight weeks.